Doujinshi: Distinctly Japanese
There are many expressions of fandom that cross genres and cultures – fan fiction, fan art, even cosplay. But there is one form in particular that is distinctly Japanese, both in its origin and in […]
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Anime Neverland
One of the challenges of liking anime is having to sometimes admit that you prefer cartoons to more “grown up” forms of entertainment. And sometimes you can defend yourself with a really adult title like […]
Wonder Woman’s Foreign Successors
I’ve been reading Mike Madrid’s The Supergirls, a really fantastic look at the history of superheroines in mainstream American comics. I just reached the 1970s, and the karate-chopping, white-pantsuit-wearing, depowered Wonder Woman era that came with […]
CHARACTERS: Rintaro Okabe of Steins;Gate
Just so you all know, I didn’t intend this series to feature so many anime characters. I wanted to talk about the characters from books I’d read, movies I’d seen, and television shows I’d watched. […]
Who Got Cultural Studies In My Fandom?
Bendições from Brazil! By the time this post goes live, I will have been in this lovely country for two whole weeks, and will be getting ready to head back Stateside. But being here has […]
Anime roundup 7/12/2013: The World Is Illusion
It’s season premiere time, so let’s set aside the continuing shows for a week to look at new stuff. (Space Brothers is taking the week off, anyway.) Day Break Illusion premiere – Akari Taiyō is an […]
Weeaboos of the Renaissance
Weeaboos? Weeaboos? If you don’t know what a weeaboo is, you probably aren’t one. If you’d rather be quite sure, visit this link and play weeaboo bingo with yourself! The checklist to the right is […]
Gunbuster: Adventures in Shonen Tropes
Studio Gainax veteran Hiroyuki Imaishi has been in the news lately for his upcoming project, Kill La Kill, which reminded me–I’ve been meaning to write a big fat recommendation post for the 1980s classic, Aim for the […]
Characters: Jet Black frmo Cowboy BeBop
Rounding out the characters from Cowboy Bebop, we end with Jet Black, the Black Dog. Yes, there’s still Ed, but what else can be said about her than, he’s a seven foot ex basketball pro, […]
Evolution of an Otaku: Conflict of Identity
If you had asked me at the age of fourteen if I considered myself an otaku, I would have raised one snarky eyebrow at you and said, “Obviously.” And it was pretty obvious, too, what […]
One Thousand Posts
Today Amazing Stories achieves a milestone in publishing its 1,000th post (and then some!) When this project first began – the resurrection of the world’s first science fiction magazine – I had high hopes, huge […]
Hidden Treasures: Review of a Manga Reference Book
Used bookstores are veritable treasure troves, as I’m sure many Amazing Stories readers will agree. Digging through the shelves and piles of every type of book imaginable is a bibliophile’s dream especially when it doesn’t […]
Anime roundup 6/21/2013: The Great Chain of Beating
Hunter x Hunter #84 – One of the recurring features of shōnen series is a tendency to look at characters exclusively through who they can and can’t defeat in a fight. The shōnen world can […]
Characters: Faye Valentine From Cowboy Bebop
My last article talked about Spike from Cowboy Bebop. I decided to write this week’s article on Bebop’s other fan-favorite character, Faye Valentine. Originally a theif who trusts no one, Faye becomes an important […]
The Lasting Impact of Miyazaki’s Princess
There are some artists who leave a lasting impression on every life their work touches. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Hayao Miyazaki is one of those artists; I know that his […]
Michiko to Hatchin is the Best Anime You’ve Never Watched
Michiko to Hatchin is as good as Cowboy Bebop. There, I said it. It’s also as good as Serial Experiments Lain and Neon Genesis Evangelion, but Bebop is the important comparison here. Did you enjoy […]
That Fighting Spirit! Yankees, Bad Boys, and Yakuza
Girls just love a bad boy, right? At least that’s what we’re led to believe in Western media. But I’ve never been into the bad boy trope myself (we are momentarily excluding Buffy the Vampire […]
MCM Expo (Comic-Con) Part Deux
I was recently in London – less than a week ago to be exact – and had the great pleasure of once again attending another MCM Expo at the Excel Centre in east London. It […]
Characters: Spike Spiegel
Ask someone to name the most important SF anime of all time, and chances are they’ll say Cowboy Bebop. It’s hard to argue. The sometimes-drama-sometimes-comedy about spacefaring bounty hunters had most of what you could […]
Slice-Of-Life and the Open Ending
I have noticed a trend in newer anime in the last few months: The completely open-ended conclusion. To be fair, anime stories have always had a different flavor to their endings than Western cartoons, in […]
Anime roundup 6/2/2013: Graduation Day
Hunter x Hunter #81 – Watch that fight scene in isolation, and it’s just another case of insanely exaggerated martial arts. But watch it with the weight of 80 previous episodes of struggling and training, […]
Pretty Soldiers: Hotaru Tomoe
Hotaru Tomoe is abused by her father. She suffers from an illness that leaves her breathless, weak and wracked with pain. She is picked on by her classmates. Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune are planning […]
The Trouble With Definitions; or, Not All Anime Fans Watch Hentai
[Author’s Note: The following post discusses hentai, which is a type of animated pornography. No lewd images are present; however, there is a link to an erotic woodblock print. The author asks that readers use […]
East vs. West: Comic Book Showdown
Though my position here, such as it is, is that of “anime blogger,” I think that my real interest in media from the Land of the Rising Sun is comic books, otherwise known as manga. […]
The Real Manga Blues: A “Me and the Devil Blues” Review
Of all the potential stories to succeed phenomenally in manga form, not many people expect a story centering around blues music in the deep American South to qualify. Even less likely is a story about […]
Hayao Miyazaki and Epic Fantasy
Since taking on this blogging position, I have been struggling to find works that would appeal to the audience that Amazing Stories has, particularly those who are interested in fantasy. I would categorize a large […]
5 More Anime and Manga Titles for HBO to Adapt
Between Game of Thrones and the planned American Gods series, HBO has been drinking deeply from the Nerd Money well. This is, of course, part of that much-discussed wave of geek culture we’ve seen ripple […]
Art in Action: A Bakuman Review
I spend a lot of time lately complaining about the state of anime and the series that have been created within the last five or so years. In the course of this tirade, shounen manga […]
Characters: Clare of Claymore
Claymore is one of the more interesting anime I’ve seen in a while. It’s a pretty standard story. Monsters, known as yoma, feed on humans, and the only ones who can defeat them are swords […]
The Young Animators’ Project, and What We Can Hope For
It has recently been brought to my attention that every year, the Japanese government pays a large sum of money to a handful of animation studios so that those studios will each produce a half-hour […]
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